June thoughts
feelings for a while - Jason Calhoun
𖦹
feelings for a while - Jason Calhoun 𖦹
THERE’S SO MUCH I WANT TO WRITE ABOUT AND THERE’S SO MUCH I’M THINKING ABOUT AND I MUST TALK ABOUT ALL OF THEM BUT THE WORDS REFUSE TO COME TO ME EASILY. It seemed like my brain has been caught in a crossfire between the internet’s constant effort to induce brain rot and the desire to run away far enough as a futile effort not to be perceived by anyone ever again. But I am a flawed being as humans usually are, and sometimes being contradictory is what I do best so I am writing to you instead. I can’t help that the fundamental core of my personality is slowly being altered by 30-seconds long videos telling me what shade of lipstick would suit me the best, the same way I can’t help that I still keep all the media sources with me because trust me, sometimes they give me valuable inspiration to write about. You just have to be patient and look hard enough for it. So for now, carry my thoughts with me, and if being perceived is inevitable to happen in the progress, if it’s necessary for me to live fully than so be it. Here are some things I’ve been contemplating about/thinking of in June:
I’m not sure if I understand what it means to love anymore. Call it a semantics problem, a differing opinion, a jumbled concept that people use when they can’t explain why they are acting so strange, like all logic and reason has been stripped away from their bodies and are now cursed to feel, feel, feel with such intensity. I have experienced relationships where I am driven to the cliff’s edge, wanting to devour and be devoured in the name of love and call it poetry. Look at this body of water that have been a truthful observer of our bone-chilling connection, look at all the things we have thrown inside of it. Such enormity of desire to understand someone, to dissect and learn every crevices and curves of their insides, isn’t that love? There was a time where you could have torn me apart limb from limb with your bare hands, eat my heart and spit it back out and I would have let you because isn’t that what lovers do? I’m not stupid, I know I will be destroyed. I want you to be the one to do it. Isn’t that what lovers do? They leap into the water despite the obvious risk of drowning and they stand by their choice and accept the salt to block all their airways. I have experienced relationships where everything is more mature and catered to what they would call a healthy one, centred around calm conversations (which, to me is so much more terrifying than chaos, I have learnt). I am so uncomfortable with the tone of your voice right now, or rather the suspicious lack of threat in it. I don’t understand this situation and it scares me that I don’t and I need you to do something I’m familiar with and I need you to mess something up all bloody but you are not going to. Everything is perfectly intact. How is that possible? Why is it so calm? There are no ribs poking out for vulnerability’s sake, just trips to the grocery store and the bright kitchen light and the sound of plastic trash bags rustling so we can clean up and sit down for dinner and watch something before bed. Is this what lovers are supposed to do? I’m not sure. Perhaps there’s a new revelation about love that awaits for my arrival. I’m not sure if I should find out, my soles are worn.
Do I really want to be a nun or do I just need to meditate in silence for 15 minutes? Do I really want to get away from all the people I’ve ever known and live in a secluded place forever or do I just need to sleep for 10 hours, undisrupted? Do I really want to be free from the mundane but cruel nature of adulthood or do I just need to develop better coping mechanisms?
Is this a good time for me to bring retinol into my skincare routine? I hate that I’m giving into the vain societal pressures to pretend like aging doesn’t exist and cover up all evidence that our bodies are just decaying mechanisms bound to join the maggots in the soil one day, but I am also unfortunately weak-hearted with affinity for pretty things. Take this as my confession. Maybe one day I will be strong enough not to care about how my nose is shaped or how my astronomically big my forehead is but as of now I will keep shaping my brows and doing my hair because I care about my appearance more than I’d like to.
I know nothing.
How do I balance every single one of my interests and still be sociable? I want to keep dancing until my joints reach their limit, I want to look at how colours spread across the skies and I want to learn more about the religion I grew up with and I want to bake and I want to cook like a proper chef does and I want to go out and stand in front of a little pile of ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and feel its stinging desire, as Maggie Nelson says. I want to have time to read, to create, to communicate with machines. I want to get better at coding as much as I want to get better at writing. If only sleep wasn’t such a necessity and the rain wasn’t so alluring to sit still and listen to the sound of it hitting the windows as if telling me to slow down and breathe.
I must learn to detach without ripping apart my ability to feel all together with it. I must learn to be indifferent without succumbing to apathy.
Day after day I continue to be fascinated by technology. Is this something a poet should be doing?
Is the world really ending? Will it happen in my lifetime? If not, and if what Buddhism says is real, do you think I can escape from the cycle of life and death before it ends? What will happen if I can’t?
I think I just need to find a new fictional character to fixate upon as a distraction from all of this.
I think I just found him. (You will never guess who)
cover image by @LZDGEAR on X
